Non-resident parents

In most waves of Growing Up in Ireland there has been approximately 15% of study

children living in a one-parent household (e.g. Cohort 08 at 3, Williams et al. 2013,

p.74); this implies that a similar percentage have another biological parent

elsewhere.39 Previous analysis of Growing Up in Ireland data (e.g. Cohort 08 at 13,

DCEDIY, 2024c) also suggests there is considerable variation in the amount of

contact a child has with their non-resident parent (usually their father), with some

having very frequent contact and others none at all. For some children, therefore,

their non-resident parent is a key figure in their ‘microsystem’ and they may have a

second home with that person if a shared parenting arrangement is in place. This

implies that collecting information from and about the non-resident parent, their

relationship with the study child, and the context (such as housing) in which that

relationship develops is important for a complete picture of the child’s life.

Furthermore, we know from a longitudinal perspective on Cohort 08 that among

children who had a non-resident parent by age 13, over two-thirds were no longer

living (or had never lived) with that parent by the time they were 4 years old

(DCEDIY, 2024c). If a similar pattern is repeated with Cohort 24, then we can expect

a sizeable number of non-resident parents to be associated with the cohort and

contemporary data on those early years of the child’s life would be useful in planning

policies to support both parents and children.

However, collecting information from the non-resident parent has proved challenging

in Growing Up in Ireland and for other similar studies in other countries. A significant

initial hurdle is obtaining the contact details for that person if the resident parent

either declines to provide them or does not know them. In theory it should be

possible, in the Irish context, to use information from the birth register and other

administrative records to trace the child’s non-resident parent (if they live in Ireland)

but that may be unacceptable to the child’s resident parent, risking the household

withdrawing from the study. While Growing Up in Ireland has attempted to survey

non-resident fathers in almost all waves prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-22,

the number of returns was relatively low and likely to be unrepresentative of the

entire population of relevant non-resident parents. Critically, following a low level of

engagement in the pilot, the CSO decided not to attempt to survey non-resident

parents in the first wave of the new cohort (CSO, 2024). This means that the

39 An exact match between the number of one-parent households and the number of children with a non-resident, biological parent is not expected. Some households may be headed by a lone parent due to widowhood; and some two-parent households may include a step-parent meaning that the study child could still have a biological parent living elsewhere.

decision whether to survey them at the next wave when Cohort 24 is age 3 is

particularly important.

Interim findings on a scoping review of engaging non-resident parents